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More for less- how to cut the fat?

The outrage over MPPs voting themselves an eyebrow-raising Yuletide 25 per cent pay hike are a necessary price to pay to stop the Ontario legislature from becoming a political 'farm team.'

So say Liberal Dave Levac and Progressive Conservative Toby Barrett.

Levac, who represents Brant, and Barrett, from Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant, support the warning of integrity commissioner Coulter Osborne that the legislature could soon become a “farm team” for the House of Commons.

Both MPPs defended Wednesday their decisions to join a Grit-Tory alliance to vote an increase in their base pay to about $110,000 from $88,771, less than two weeks before Christmas. "

2 comments:

What an interesting way to cut fat in Government by giving yourself an 25 pay increase to a $110,000 base salary

The hypocritical analogy of sports and farm teams was used to justify the increase.This is laughable. In sports if you do not score points or goals you get benched with a cut in pay. Ask the taxpayers or the auditor how well they have scored for you. Have your personal costs gone down or have your legislated services improved. If no goals have been scored for you- this is a very poor approach to leading by example and an unprecedented self serving Xmas present at taxpayer expense.

There are ordinary working people in this province who haven't had a raise in years.

I think if this were put to a province wide public vote MPP's would be getting a notice of dismissal instead of a raise. St. George, On. E-mail: plepage001@sympatico.ca Date: 12/14/2006

Name: Orville Comment: Re MPP pay hike. Sure the poor people who ran for the glory of being a provincial MPP need a raise, about as much as the thousands of people who have lost thier jobs within the last year to cut back from major industries. How can you claim to be a farm team for the federal government, it is a matter of choice to become a polition, nobody that i know of held a gun to your head to make you decide to run.A raise to me is absolutely ridiculous, make me understand how you can justify a 25% payhike with so many taxpayers out of work and the government services at what to me could be said to be at an all time low. Convert some of that money to the health care system so that some of the dieing cancer patients can get equal and fair treatment and access to medications they so direly need ! Brantford, Ontario Date: 12/14/2006

Name: sieg Comment: What an interesting way to cut fat in Government by giving yourself an 25 pay increase to a $110,000 base salary

The hypocritical analogy of sports and farm teams was used to justify the increase.This is laughable. In sports if you do not score points or goals you get benched with a cut in pay. Ask the taxpayers or the auditor how well they have scored for you. Have your personal costs gone down or have your legislated services improved. If no goals have been scored for you- this is a very poor approach to leading by example and an unprecedented self serving Xmas present at taxpayer expense. Brantford, ON Date: 12/14/2006

Name: Terry Comment: Pay raise eh? Sounds pretty repetitious to me. Wasn''t that long ago there was another crowd who annointed themselves with a 12 pay increase . After the regular level of complaining, they altered it to 3. Sound familiar. Lets see just how much time it takes (if any) for this bunch of riff raff to settle for less. The trick is to always go for an outragious amount and then settle successfully for less. If I tried this tactic, I would be out of a job altogether. Too bad we can''t treat these greedy people the same way. I believe that there are a lot of qualified unemployed people willing to work for a little bit less. brantford, ontario Date: 12/14/2006